One of the astonishing facts that emerged during today’s Select Committee hearing was that State Department personnel in Libya made approximately 600 requests for better security in Benghazi, all of them apparently unheeded by Hillary Clinton. With respect to one of the 600 requests, Hillary said, “Well, Congresswoman, one of the great attributes that Chris Stevens had was a really good sense of humor. And I just see him smiling as he’s typing this.” Somehow, I doubt that.

There is a clip where Congressman Mike Pompeo walks Hillary through the security requests quarter by quarter, but that doesn’t seem to be available on YouTube. In the clip below, Pompeo has already established the 600 number and questions Hillary about the difference between Sid Blumenthal, whose emails unfailingly arrived in Hillary’s in box, and her own personnel, who didn’t have similar access–she had no official email address–and apparently were unable to bring any of 600 requests for help to her attention:

On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show this evening, Lindsey Graham connected the State Department’s seemingly inexplicable failure to respond to hundreds of pleas for better security–even as the security situation in Benghazi worsened, and the British withdrew their personnel–with the White House’s now undeniable lies about what happened, after the fact. Both, Graham suggested, were motivated by the same political concern: the election was approaching and the Obama campaign was trying to sell the claim that al Qaeda was on the run. Obama didn’t want to look like Bush, with fortified compounds and reliance on military personnel. Rather, he wanted a light footprint consistent with his pacific preference for leading from behind. Ergo, no reinforcement of the dangerously exposed State Department personnel in Benghazi.

Is that theory right? It could be. I can’t think of any other explanation for how 600 pleas for more security could be ignored by the Obama administration.